Flower Confidential: The Good, the Bad, and the Beautiful in the Business of Flowers

Cut flowers are big business—and like just about every other product, flowers are often produced far from where they’re sold. The process—from breeding, through growing, shipping and selling—eloquently unfolds in this exquisite book by flower aficionado Amy Stewart. With interviews and observations at each step, she describes how the bouquet you order for your sweetie can contain flowers that started in a greenhouse in South America or Africa, were auctioned in Holland, and wholesaled in Los Angeles or Miami before showing up in the local flower shop—which, in turn, might be owned by an international corporation. Stewart lets us in on the tricks and technology that allow flowers to travel for days, across continents, still with enough beauty left to sit in a vase for a week.